Al Heavens is a Haddonfield, N.J.- based, nationally syndicated, home-improvement writer and author whose newspaper columns, magazine articles, and books have been the first word on remodeling for 50 million readers for more than three decades. He is the author of What No One Ever Tells You About Renovating Your Home and Remodeling on The Money: Fifteen Innovative Projects Designed to Add Value to Your Home and was “The Gadgeteer” on Discovery Channel’s Home Matters program.
When I moved to South Jersey more than 20 years ago, I found myself driving around the townships and boroughs adjacent to the Delaware River, stopping my car to inspect the older housing stock, especially the bungalows.
We rented a bungalow for the first year we lived here. Just a few months after signing the lease, we bought a bungalow, a 1929 Craftsman-style house that we believe was purchased from Sears, Roebuck & Co. by the original owner.
Although I had issues with a few of the changes the previous owners had made, their renovation efforts – a kitchen addition, specifically – did not alter the original house at all.
Too often, however, these simple houses, which abound in this region, are changed so much as to be unrecognizable. Ride the High-Speed Line through Collingswood, Haddon Township and Haddonfield, and you will see additions that overwhelm, rather than improve them.
There seems to be very little interest in bungalows around here.
This is not the case in Southern California and the areas around San Francisco, where the bungalow and its restoration have become something of an art form.
As I have said, a lot of our area’s bungalows are hiding under the renovations of later eras, which often didn’t treat the bungalow too kindly. Then again, we didn’t really begin to like Victorian architecture until the 1970s.
When mortgages were not widely available and most people saved for years to buy a house, the mail-order bungalow was an answer to a lot of prayers.
And, most often, prayers were directed to Sears, Roebuck & Co., which produced the lion’s share in the early part of the 20th century.
From 1908 to 1937, Sears’ Modern Homes Department sold more than 100,000 homes, many completely furnished. By selling complete homes, Sears hoped to build a market for the rest of its merchandise.
Plans the retailer provided even showed where a Sears piano would look best or where a Sears sofa could be placed.
Sears wasn’t the only source of “ready-cut” houses. Firms such as Palliser & Palliser, Aladdin and Montgomery Ward were in the business before Sears. But by the 1920s, Sears was first in sales.
By 1932, Sears’ home-construction division was “the biggest home-building organization on earth,” according to the company’s literature.
It had 2,500 employees. Its sash-and-door factory in Norwood, Ohio, covered 17 acres and could produce $3.5 million worth of millwork annually.
Sears even provided the financing, for 25 percent down, with up to 15 years to repay. If a house cost $4,000 and the value of a prospective buyer’s lot was $1,000, Sears would lend the buyer up to $3,750. The buyer’s cash investment would be $250, and monthly payments, to start four months from purchase, were $32.30.
It was part of a mail-order marketing scheme that Sears and others created to help push other products.
Everything came in a package on a railroad car. Once the Victorian era ended and Colonial Revival became popular, the houses were easier to manufacture and ship.
And they were affordable. In 1908, such houses typically ranged in price from $650 to $2,500. A two-room, no-bath cottage, however, could be bought for as little $146.25.
The publication, in 1986, of “Houses by Mail: A Guide to Houses from Sears, Roebuck & Co.” renewed interest in the venerable bungalows, Dutch Colonials, cottages, farmhouses and barns — in all about 450 models with names such as Vallonia, Puritan, Rembrandt and Berwyn that filled the Sears house catalogues for almost three decades.
The book was published by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which continues to encourage the preservation of Sears houses.
Bungalows often were built by companies near factories as housing for employees. Lower-level labor got the masonry rowhouses. But managers and executives in the early years of the 20th century got bungalows.
For example, the long-defunct American Magnesia Co. in Plymouth Meeting, Pa., had 12 houses built for its top employees near what is now the Norristown interchange of the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
A photo of the development, called Peach Run, appeared in the 1921 Modern Homes catalogue. Peach Run was razed for construction of the turnpike.
There were contractors who specialized in assembling mail-order houses, as a search of telephone books and city directories of that era show. There was really nothing unusual about them, except that they came in complete packages.
Amazon has nothing over the Sears catalogue. And I have yet to see a complete house kit – except for dolls – available on the Amazon website.
The Depression killed the mail-order house business. Sears made the mistake of getting into the financing end of the home industry and found itself foreclosing on the same families it had succeeded in getting to buy its homes.
Although Sears houses could be bought until about 1940, in 1934, the accounts of the Modern Homes Department were liquidated.
Today, factory-built houses have become a viable alternative to stick built. Large sections can be trucked to a building site and assembled quickly.
Just like the old days. Except that it doesn’t come with a piano.